Turkish Website Blocking Statistics as of 01 January 2009

Since the Turkish Law No. 5651 on the Regulation of Publications on the Internet and Suppression of Crimes Committed by means of Such Publications came into force in November 2007, several websites were blocked by court orders and administrative blocking orders issued by the Telecommunications Communication Presidency (TIB). In terms of statistics, it was revealed by TIB that as of 01 January, 2009, 1475 websites are blocked in Turkey (compared to 1310 on 01 December, 2008, 1187 on 01 November, 2008, and 1115 on 01 October, 2008) under the provisions of Law No. 5651. 280 (19%) of these websites are blocked by court orders, while majority, 1195 (81%) are blocked via administrative blocking orders issued by TIB.

In terms of the 280 court orders so far, 38 websites were blocked because they were deemed obscene (article 226 of the Turkish Penal Code), 5 websites were blocked because they involved sexual exploitation and abuse of children (article 103(1) of the Turkish Penal Code), 17 websites were blocked because of gambling (article 228 of the Turkish Penal Code), 3 were blocked because they involved betting, and 50 websites were ordered to be blocked in relation to crimes committed against Atatürk (Law No. 5816, dated 25/7/1951). 32 of these 50 blocking orders were recurring orders involving 17 websites (majority involved YouTube) issued by different courts around the country. With regards to 158 illegal items containing crimes committed against Atatürk TIB successfully asked content and hosting providers to take down these items from their servers. As a result of such co-operation their websites were not subjected to access blocking orders.

Furthermore, 2 websites were blocked in relation to prostitution (article 227, Turkish Criminal Code), and one website was ordered to be blocked in relation to the facilitation of the use of drugs (article 190 of the Turkish Penal Code). 164 websites were blocked by courts for reasons outside the scope of Law No. 5651 but the detailed breakdown for these orders was not provided by TIB. It is however understood that TIB executed the blocking orders even though they do not involve the catalogue crimes listed in article 8. These 164 blocking orders are unlawfully issued by the courts as they are not related to the catalogue crimes provided under article 8 of Law No. 5651.

In terms of blocking orders, some sites are blocked by DNS while others are blocked by both DNS and IP addresses. TIB statistics revealed that 331 IP addresses were blocked in addition to 1144 unique website addresses as of 01 January, 2009 from Turkey. [Blog entry by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz]

A detailed assessment of the Turkish approaches to Internet content regulation is provided in a 100 page long report entitled Restricted Access: A Critical Assessment of Internet Content Regulation and Censorship in Turkey written by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz and Dr. Kerem Altiparmak. This bi-lingual (English/Turkish) report was published during November 2008: http://privacy.cyber-rights.org.tr/?page_id=256

It always amazes me that governments a) have so little faith in their residents’ ability to decide for themselves what content is appropriate and b)that they really believe that they can effectively filter and control access to a medium as ubiquitous as the internet.

If the Turkish government are successful in their prohibition of some of the targeted material, they can claim to be successful where so many other governments have already failed. Very interesting to see if in 5 years time the measures are impartially judged to have worked.

ps as an addition to the above post (sorry – hit submit prematurely) I work in an industry (gambling) that is clearly on the TIB hit list. Despite this, I know of a number of large online gambling organizations, some publicly listed, that still accept Turkish players and indeed have website and support capabilities tailored to Turkish players. It seems they believe that the prohibition will not be as effective as officials hope